Reality Check Quotes

“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“If you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask no one to be different so that you can feel good. You would free yourself of all of that cumbersome impossibility of needing to control the world, or control your mate, or control your child. You are the only one who creates your reality. For no one else can think for you, no one else can do it. It is only you, every bit of it you.”
― Esther Hicks

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister

“Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, The Visitor

“Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“You are on your knees,” I said. “We are not negotiating.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Some people walk through a hallway with covered mirrors– the hallway is lined with mirrors but there are blankets covering each of them. They go through life believing in an image of themselves that isn't real, and an image of themselves standing in the world and relative to the world, that isn't real. If you happen to be in that hallway and pull the blankets off the mirrors, they're going to think that you're hurting them; but they're actually just seeing their reflection for the first time. Sometimes the most horrendous thing a person can see, is all the hidden things inside them, the things they've covered, the things they choose not look at. And you're not hurting them, you're setting them free.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“He turned and saw Becky, crying in the doorway of her house. What was he doing here? Turning back he saw flashing blue lights at the end of the road, and realised the ringing in his ears was the sound of approaching sirens.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare.”
― Rachel Cohn, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“Life is difficult.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

“You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Misfortunes never come singly.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“People have sex, even the religious ones. Yet, when sex is transferred into words, suddenly it's dirty, vulgar, immoral, trashy. Funny huh?”
― Hector Himeros

“Hip - Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands "jive talk." Someone who is "with it." The expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't "dig" what it means, no one can ever tell you.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“But persistent name calling? that prolongs hurt. It stretches out. Each nasty word stretches the rubber band further away until finally, one day, it snaps back at you with maximum impact”
― Randa Abdel-Fattah, Ten Things I Hate About Me

“[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two ... but, more generally, from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who had graciously told me of their most private and intimate thoughts, hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realise how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behaviour and character of women.”
― Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

“There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. He prays that she'll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from his hands. She orders him to masturbate for her. She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“-Iti spun un lucru. Ce este mai apropiat decat fratele de frate, mama de copil?Ce este mai apropiat decat mana de gura, gandul de minte? E viziunea, Roger. Nu ma astept ca tu sa intelegi asta...
-Dar pricep,mai incape vorba!
Jocelin isi inalta chipul si deodata zambi:
-Chiar intelegi?
-Dar vine clipa in care viziunea nu mai e decat jocul copilului de-a-sa-zicem.
-Aha!
Clatina din cap, incet, atent; si luminile plutira.
-Atunci nu intelegi deloc. Deloc.”
― William Golding, The spire, William Golding : notes

“Uncertainty is a temptress. We may try our best to avoid her. But what is certain is that at some point of time, she will find us. The only question that remains is whether like Medusa, she will paralyze you, or whether like one of the nine muses of ancient Greece, she will drive you to greater things.”
― Richie Singh, Chasing Butterflies

“Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the
earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it
goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each
twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines,
and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe,
and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not
shine for some one mountain, or for some one island,
or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but
for other planets as well as our earth. If you would
only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground
beneath your own feet, you might all understand this,
and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines
for you, or for your country alone.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Eleven Stories

“That voice… My voice, it was my voice. How did Flora have my voice? How could I have thrown it away? The only time I was ever happy under the sea was when I was singing, and I sewed my mouth shut in the hopes that a boy I barely knew could kiss it open again.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“the world is conditioning your minds with violence”
― William P. Johnson

“America is still AmeriKKKa. rather we like it or not”
― Fee Scott

“Hay una realidad que demuestra la verdad de un hecho. Porque nuestra memoria y nuestros sentidos son demasiado inseguros, demasiado parciales. Incluso podemos afirmar que muchas veces es imposible discernir hasta qué punto un hecho que creemos percibir es real y a partir de qué punto sólo creemos que lo es. Así que para preservar la realidad como tal, necesitamos otra realidad -una realidad colindante- que la relativice. Pero, a su vez, esta realidad colindante necesita una base para relativizarse a sí misma. Es decir, que hay otra realidad colindante que demuestra, a su vez, que ésta es real. Y esta cadena se extiende indefinidamente dentro de nuestra conciencia y, en un cierto sentido, puede afirmarse que es a través de esta sucesión, a través de la conservación de esta cadena, como adquirimos conciencia de nuestra existencia misma. Pero si esta cadena, casualmente, se rompe, quedamos desconcertados. ¿La realidad está al otro lado del eslabón roto? ¿Está a este lado?”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
― Mike Tyson

“No guy wants a broke female and No female wants a broke guy”
― wowjames

“It is easy to give without loving yet DIFFICULT TO LOVE without GIVING.
After all Love is a Vern, it must be demonstrated genuinely.”
― Robert Junior

“the world is conditioning our minds with violence”
― William P. Johnson

“Never turn your back on government.”
― Gerald Montgomery